This park came onto my radar screen when I saw a brochure for Sugar Land parks, and a grid of the various park facilities showed that this park had a canoe launch. That was good enough for me to want to go explore it and see what it was like.
Of course, I start out by doing a little more research, checking out the park website, and looking at a map and aerial photos to get an idea of what to expect. The park is located just off of Highway 59/69 (whatever they call it these days), outside of the Highway 6 crossing, on the banks of the Brazos River.
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| Park facilities |
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Location map |
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Aerial photo |
The result of my research was that it looked like a few hours of fun could be had in this lake. So, over the Memorial Day weekend, it seemed fitting to get some paddling exercise in the canoe at Sugar Land Memorial Park lake - the park's theme is a memorial to Sugar Land Veterans.
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Under construction |
I admit that the aerial photo didn't make the water look very appealing, but it looks much nicer in real life than in that old aerial photo. The lake is about 2,000 feet long, surrounded by grass and a walking trail, and contains three islands, one accessible by bridge containing the veteran's memorial, and two others out in the middle which are heavily overgrown with brush. The lake is man-made, not natural, and looking at older aerial photos shows it was constructed in 2005-2006, scooped out of flat prairie land.
At the traffic circle entrance there are seven flags flying: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine and POW/MIA.
It is only about a hundred feet from the parking area to the lake, so the portage is short. Walking towards the lake, one of the first things you see is an alligator warning sign, and behind it is an emergency call box rising up in a tube like a giant exclamation mark. But I didn't see any gators at all. Not even any tracks on the muddy shorelines of the islands. So, I don't think there are actually any here, and this sign is just what I call a "lawyer sign". By that I mean that the city lawyers deem it prudent to have the sign, whether gators reside here or not. If they don't put up the sign and a gator sneaks in and hurts someone some day, the victim would want to sue the city claiming that the city should have warned them, and was negligent for not doing so. So, there's the warning. And with the warning sign in place, the city has that as a defense: "We told you so!"
The next sign you see is the canoe rules, all of which are perfectly reasonable and things you should be routinely doing on every paddle trip anyway.
And then you arrive at the shoreline. The well-groomed grass runs right into the water, and the waterline is a bit of squishy mud, but not a big deal. After you push off, just dangle your feet in the water to rinse the mud off your shoes so it doesn't get transferred to the inside of your boat.
Straight ahead is the lop-sided Veteran's Memorial. More on that later.
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| Entrance flags |
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Gator warning |
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Canoe rules |
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Shoreline |
Things to do: explore the lake clockwise, then counter-clockwise. Do figure eights around the islands. Go ashore to see the windmill and butterfly garden. Go ashore to see the Veteran's Memorial. Go ashore to find out what the funny-looking PVC pipe gizmo is. Go ashore to explore the islands. Chat with the trail-walkers and answer all their questions about canoeing. I enjoyed chatting with a man from India, from half-way around the world, in a flowing white robe, who started out the questioning with; "What's the difference between a canoe and a kayak?"
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| Windmill |
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Fishing line recycling |
The windmill was spinning, but there was no water coming out of the plumbing at the bottom. The windmill sits in a butterfly garden, which had lots of beautiful flowers, but no butterflies.
The northwest end of the lake is clogged with underwater growth of what I call "coon tail", because it looks like the bushy tail of a raccoon. Hopefully that won't spread... There are other aquatic plants to be seen, like cane and pickerel weed. My pickerel weed photos seem to show the presence of the little nutty seeds, which are supposed to be good to eat. But I didn't think about them when I was there, so I missed another chance to try them on my taste buds.
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| "Coon tail" |
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Cane |
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Pickerel weed |
The islands would seem to make a good rookery, offering nesting birds some isolation from land predators, but there were few to be seen. I only saw several each of egrets, night herons and ibis. My photos are from a distance, because they were all skittish and I couldn't get very close. And I felt guilty for trying to get closer and making them so anxious that they flew off.
And I saved a visit to the monument tower for last, because as an old Marine I figured I might get emotional, and I did. There is a bridge from the mainland to the island location, and you pass by the "flag wall", an abstract muted United States flag. The 50-foot tall monument is concrete, leaning to one side in a lop-sided manner. It has five sides, one for each of the service branches; Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Inside, on each branch's panel, are the names of Sugar Land veterans from that branch who have died in service to our country. The split down the Marine side is designed so that as the sun crosses from east to west during the day, a thin sliver of light moves across the wall panels on the inside, highlighting the names as it passes over them.
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| Monument ahead |
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Flag wall |
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Monument close-up |
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Fallen Veterans |
I'll finish up here with some beautiful flowers from the butterfly garden:
This is a nice park, and worth a visit!